Theres no appropriate title

Hi, I just woke up from a nap, and feel a bit wierd, so if this comes out wierdly, I'll revise it later. Additionally, I missed mostly all of these conversations, so I might be repeating some things, but let me add the short versions of my 0.02 (so 0.01?):

1. Religion shouldn't be legislated in America.

That's a powerful statement, especially coming from a Christian. That being said, my wife and I have had arguments about what should be done about abortion. As I see it, to downright outlaw it is not humanitarian, especially considering individual circumstances, and to let it go unabated is both disgusting and irresponsible, especially as being used as a method a birth control. It's not pretty, but sometimes it's necessary. But it's something that shouldn't be exploitable to the irresponsible. So what's the solution, if at all? More on that in a bit.

2. Morality cannot be ignored.

In America, we try to open our doors to a variety of cultures, religion, and ways of life. This being said, we cannot legislate one particular group of peoples' morals as "the way of life". However, as an educator, I feel that our students are coming in now without respect for each other, themselves, and their elders. As I see it, this is not a function of religion at home, but rather, the lack of time and emphasis being spent on teaching students manners, respect, and morality. The concept of teaching this in schools anymore is considered absurd due to the variety of cultures in local communities, so the notion of even teaching it is downright discouraged. However, in schools we find that, much to our dismay, the students just aren't "getting it". In order to teach our students right and wrong effectively, I believe it needs to come from all angles, including school.
"But Mr. Gregory, it's your job to teach them Math, not wrong and right!" But if I don't, and you surely don't, then who will?

I believe that this is the core problem with America and the world today. We have forgotten what is important in life. We have forgotten that it is more important to love each other, and to respect ourselves, than it is to make more money and enjoy ourselves at no matter what cost. Elimination of abortion should be a side effect of a solution, not a method of solving a much larger problem.

3. So where the heck are you going with this?

Simple. We as parents, educators, community members, and religious and non-religious alike know that there are things that are right, and things that are wrong. Regardless of your moral stature (or lack thereof), there are elements of morality and self-respect that are universal and MUST be instilled in both our youth and our adults. We must be allowed to teach our children and students responsibility and respect, and ramifications for their actions, and we must STOP encouraging them to take the easy way out in life.

We need to encourage ourselves and our future to STOP NEGLECTING RESPONSIBILITY, STOP DISRESPECTING YOURSELF AND OTHERS, and LOVE YOURSELF AND OTHERS. In short, I think we need to reconsider allowing these principles, among others, to be re-injected into our school systems.

 

Oh, and regarding free will: it's simply your own frame of reference. If you consider time to be defined since before time, sure, everything is determined. If you feel that there is only now and no "before" or "after", then your frame of reference is all that's important.

My choice of belief is that we have been given free will. Hence my rant on responsibility.

 

I am almost done with the paper if any of you want to read it. PM me if you want to read a copy of you. The several of you that have already emailed me will get a copy of it.

 

Therein lies the quandry indeed. That statement although I agree with morally does not fit the mold with this country's biggest principle - freedom.

You have every right to STOP NEGLECTING RESPONSIBILITY (within keeping with mans law), you have every right to STOP RESPECTING YOURSELF AND OTHERS, and you have every right not to LOVE YOURSELF AND OTHERS.

One person will not be able to change this - that would be a dictator. You can only do what you can do and hope that it becomes infectious in a positive way.

 

Actually, I disagree, partially. Morality, what is right and wrong, is EXACTLY what should be taught at home and is the responsibility of the parents. That is the parents job. You can do it at home or in a house of worship, whatever religion that may be, if the parent wants. I do agree that things like manners and respect should also be taught in school. That is what I thought Kindergarten was about, to teach children how to work in a school environment so that when they start first grade they are all able to funtion in a school environment.

Part of what I see is wrong with society today is that parents aren't doing their job. Parents have become afraid to discipline their children and overprotect them to the point that they are unable to cope with pain and disappointment. We wrap them up in padding so even a thing like getting a scratched knee falling off of a bike is major trauma. To love your children is more than giving them everything they demand. You must love your children enough to say "No" and to follow through on it. They may be unhappy for the moment, but they will get over it and respect you for it later. You only have to watch any of those awful "Nanny" shows to see how too many parents DON'T raise their children.

I have a great fear for our world. Their is more involved here than morality and religion. There is selfishness in our youngsters that is frightening. Being firm with your child is not abuse. My parents protected me, but I grew up knowing that they would not always say yes. They followed through on punishments if needed, nothing terrible, but I never forgot having my mouth full of soap when I swore at 7 years old. It seemed awful at the moment, but in reality, it wasn't harmful and I learned a strong lesson...NEVER swear in front of my parents! I was fairly spoiled, but I also grew up with a strong respect for my parents and a need to earn their respect. I still don't want to disappoint them and if you can earn that as a parent, you need never wonder if you did the right thing.

I have never had the opportunity to raise a child. I wanted to be a mother more than I can say, but I wanted my children in a family situation, with a father. So, I waited. When I was in my mid 30's, I made a conscious decision NOT to get married. I saw myself as some kind of strong independent woman who traveled the world and did great things. It didn't last long. Very soon afterwards I fell in love with Schrike and my world view changed yet again. In 2002 we got married, but 2 months before the wedding, I found out that I had uterine cancer. I had the option of waiting until we tried to have a child to have treatment, but I felt waiting a year was extremely dangerous. I may have my child, but what good would that be if that child would lose their mother. So, we made the hard decision to have the surgery and exactly 6 weeks before our wedding, I had a total hysterectomy. So much for having a baby. I am very lucky to have two great step-children, who I love very much, but that loss, the loss of not ever having my own baby, is something I am still recovering from.

So, as a result, I feel very strongly when I see parents blowing the opportunities they have raising their children. I see too many not appreciating the blessing they have and not enjoying the time they have with them. It is very special and I envy all of you parents here. I have seen and heard of how many of you raise your children....bless you. I just wish everyone was as loving and appreciative of their children as this group seems to be.

I am probably not stating things very clearly. I'm afraid I may have brought a new topic to the table. Sorry!

 

Nice, Mani -- this is the best explanation I have ever seen of how free will could coexist with an omnipotent deity.

On the topic of free will -- can we be certain that we even have free will? People are ultimately constructed of atoms and molecules, which behave in a completely deterministic fashion, except at the subatomic (quantum) level. Now, one might hypothesize that our brains are able to manipulate matter and energy at the quantum level based on activity at the conscious level, which may grant us free will, however physics tells us that no matter how you slice it, no quantum event is significant enough to affect whether a neuron fires or not. In the interest of full disclosure, the leaps of logic here are mostly conjecture on my part.

I'm going to go back to the scientific part of the debate for a bit, because I find it particularly fascinating:

When I first read this on Thursday, my first thought basically amounted to, "That's impossible." Then I thought about it a bit, and realized that I thought the earth was 6-7 billion years old, but I really didn't know why I thought it. I'm assuming I got that number from grade 9 earth science class or similar.

So, being lucky enough to work for a university and have access to an impressive library and various faculty who specialize in enviromental science, chemistry, geology, history, anthropology, and the like, I set out to see what I could learn:

The first, and possibly most important, thing I learned is that I was incorrect -- the current estimate of the age of the earth is about 4.65 billion years, not 6-7 billion years as I had previously thought. A new, more accurate estimate has apparently been produced sometime since the printing of my grade 9 science textbook.

Recorded history goes back further than 6,000 years. For example, Jericho, the oldest known human settlement, was founded about 10,000 years ago. As another example, the transition from the stone age to the copper age was in progress about 6,000 years ago.

The assertion that the earth is at least 4 billion years old is testable. If it were markedly younger, we would not have as much lead as we do, as lead is only produced by uranium isotopes that decay at a known, constant rate. This rate of decay could not have been higher because radioactive decay releases energy in the form of heat, and if the earth were significantly younger than 4 billion years, the amount of heat released would have caused visible melting. If the earth were less than about 10,000 years old, then enough heat would have been released that the entire earth would be molten.

Also on the subject of radioactive decay, the clinal distribution of strontium and rubidium that we see in an east->west gradient across North America could only have formed over billions of years.

This is getting a little long, but I learned some fascinating things over the past couple of days, and I wanted to share them. In the same vein, I'd be interested to know where the figure of 6,000 years for the age of the earth is from -- it challenges some fairly well-established tenets of multiple fields of study, the validation for the theory must be fascinating.

btw, thanks Swifty for starting this thread, and thanks everyone for a fine discussion. It's given me an opportunity to exercise my mental muscles a bit, and I've really enjoyed it.

 

Bretta, I don't think we're disagreeing. I think the problem lies in the fact that parents aren't doing their jobs, AND they're not allowing anyone else to make up for it. I think that part of learning morality is involved with knowing that this morality is socially acceptable. To not be able to even mention what is right and wrong without getting phone calls is telling our students that they can do whatever they want and get away with it (which then breeds their selfishness and lack of respect for others).

It really should be taught from all angles, as I see it. You get it from religion where, unfortunately, it is sometimes taken for granted because, "those are the boring good people". You sometimes get it from home, which would be amazing if it stuck, because, as you said, children aren't respecting their parents. If they could get it from each other in a larger setting, I think it may become more socially acceptable and actually done. But that's because I'm an idealist, after all.

I think morality, self-discipline, and respect for self and others should be taught in ALL angles. Being a teacher, I'd love to be able to discipline (not beat) my students for being disrespectful without getting a phone call about how "it's your job to teach my kids math, and it's my job to teach them right and wrong" in such a negative tone that suggests that they aren't doing their job.

 

Symen,

If what you said is true, there can be an easy explaination to this theory you have just produced. That is coming from a viewpoint that the earth was formed over a long period of time maybe, from just a huge rock fragment. Since the Bible claims that God made earth from nothing, by just speaking, couldn't this also explain a young earth. Who is to say that He didn't put so much lead into the earth to start off with? Sounds like you along with the professors are very intellectual. If we start off with absolutely no presuppositions, which theory lends more credibility?

You will see in my paper that I am just about done with.
Just making some formatting adjustments.

(Also on the subject of radioactive decay, the clinal distribution of strontium and rubidium that we see in an east->west gradient across North America could only have formed over billions of years.)
-I have done experiments in physics with the radioactive decay of rubidium-the rates are no absolutely definate at which the isotopes (i think this what they are called-it's been a while since I was in college) are given off. Not absolutely logarithmic anyways. If you reley on that information, why can't you rely only radiocarbon -14. I set out to disprove the theory of time dating by way of radioactive carbon. Since all living things have carbon in them and we can measure the rate at which the isotopes are given off, we can determine a timeline based upon how much carbon is left in the object we are measuring. No one ever told me in biology, physics, or chemistry, that this is not an accurate way to measure time. There are factors such as the amount of water in the atmosphere and the earth that change the frequency at which the isotopes change (global flood). Also, the introduction of atomic weapons and testing has distorted these rates dramatically. You can look at charts of carbon in the atmosphere and in objects prior to 1940's & 1950's and after, and see a tremendous difference. I would love to provide that paper (of which I got a 100% on my physics thesis) but I threw away the disk when I moved to my new house.

One other thing you might think about-isn't the inside of the earth a molten core which gives off a large amount of heat? If your looking for some of the heat that has been given off for all these reactions-would that not be some of it?

Thanks also Swifty for starting this thread, this has really helped me in my thinking process.

 

I'm sorry.. but the fact that some people can believe the earth is only about 6000 years old really blows my mind. Right.. you can say 'well god put the lead in the earth'.. fine.. I'll accept that as something that really can't be disproven.

However, what about all the various extinct species of animals.. like, oh, say.. DINOSAURS. Those bones are dated WAY before 6000 years old. What purpose would god have of putting bones of some creature that never lived on to the planet? That seems a bit counter-productive to me.

 

Well, I try to be intellectual, I'm not sure that I always succeed in my endeavors.

I actually thought of the idea of God creating the earth with the lead already in place as a possible counterpoint to my point that uranium->lead decay suggests that the earth is billions of years old. As a counterpoint to this, one could also argue that God created the earth last week, laid everything in place as we observe it, and created all of us complete with memories suggesting that we've been around and living much longer (I chose this example because it's somewhat analogous to the idea of God creating the earth 6,000 years ago replete with evidence to the contrary).

If we start off with no presuppositions whatsoever (including both scientific thought and religious belief), the only credible theory regarding any subject is one which we can verify for ourselves. In this particular example, anyone with access to a mass spectrometer can perform radiometric dating of a rock sample to test the theory for themselves. As you pointed out, there are some documented problems with radioactive dating, resulting in a margin of error (I'll discuss some specifics further below), but the error is not enough to allow for a 6,000 year old earth. The only evidence I have found thus far for a young earth is the book The Genesis Flood by Henry M. Morris and John C. Whitcomb (to be fair, I haven't done exhaustive research -- I would welcome any other evidence, especially verifiable theory). Given the amount of historical and scientific evidence that contradicts this interpretation, it is easier for me to assume that two men were mistaken in their interpretation of the Bible (men are fallible, after all) than it is to assume that thousands of scientists and historians are fundamentally misguided. Also, as someone else in the thread pointed out, the Bible wasn't originally written in Modern English (I believe that the Old Testament was originally written in Hebrew and Aramaic, and that the New Testament was written in Greek -- I'm not a Biblical scholar though, so please correct me if I'm wrong). Indeed, Modern English, nor any other form of the language, didn't exist at the time the Bible was written. So, if we accept that the original Bible was the true word of God, any future translations were done by men, and men are fallible, so we can't be absolutely certain that the Modern English translation of the Bible is the unadulterated word of God. Without any other evidence, the young earth theory doesn't appear credible to me.

I got it! I'm looking forward to reading it!

You're absolutely correct, Rubidium->Strontium decay isn't entirely accurate (the margin of error is 30-50 million years per 3 billion years, or about 1-1.6%). I chose Uranium->Lead decay as my primary example as it is more accurate, and one of the most highly respected methods available (the margin of error with this method is no more than 2 million years per 3 billion years, or about .06%).

Carbon-14 dating isn't appropriate for geological measurements because it only works on organic samples (and it is only usable on relatively short timescales, the maximum age limit is about 58,000 to 62,000 years), so this is really a separate subject. In any case, you're completely correct that carbon dating has to deal with the problem that the amount of atmospheric carbon-14 has not historically been constant, and external variables such as changing climate and mid-20th century nuclear testing must be accounted for. Other things that must be accounted for are varying cosmic ray intensity caused by solar storms, and the release of carbon into the atmosphere by human activity which doesn't contain carbon-14 (this is known as the Suess Effect). This can all be accounted for by calibrating the results, which is done by comparison of carbon dates of samples which can be dated independently by other methods, such as tree growth rings, ice and deep ocean cores, and cave deposits. Significant events in the calibration curves, such as the mid-20th century nuclear testing or the change in global ocean currents during the Younger Dryas period 10,000 to 11,000 years ago, can actually be themselves used as time markers for the purpose of dating samples.

It's too bad you lost your thesis. It sounds very interesting, I would have loved to have been able to read it.

Again, you're absolutely correct -- an estimated 45 to 85 percent of heat escaping from the earth is the direct result of radioactive decay within the crust. Other sources include energy released by accretion during the formation of the earth, by the sinking of heavy metals as they descended to form the earth's core, and by the effects of the earth's magnetic fields.

 

Symen,
Wow-I love this stuff. =)
You gotta check out this Dr's paper that I just read.

http://icr.org/index.php?module=articles&action=print&ID=2603

There were some other really good things that I just saw in other places on the net.

Good questions we have to look at before accepting a scientists data

1.The starting conditions are known (for example, that there was no daughter isotope present at the start, or that we know how much was there).
2.Decay rates have always been constant.

3. Systems were closed or isolated so that no parent or daughter isotopes were lost or added.

Man, I love doing research.

 

You may want to look into helium dating also.

Hamma (yeah right) - thats funny

 

Symen, here are a few more links to Dr. Gentry and some of his theories. He is a Nuclear Physicist. Technical data, so it's definitely beyong my scope, but you will probably soak it up.

The Genuine Cosmic Rosetta


A New Redshift Interpretation

The New Redshift Interpretation Affirmed


Enjoy!

 

From a different point of view: Perhaps it is one of the most honoring things you can imagine, that you are very special, one of a kind, and created for a purpose.

 

Zabdiel,

Why is it hard for you to believe that there could be life on another planet.

Lets combine both points of view for a second.

To think that Humans are the only form of Sentient life within our own Galaxy, let alone the entire universe is extremely shortsighted and incredibly arrogant. I'm with Hamma on this one.

Now, lets take your point I quoted above... that you are very special, one of a kind, and created for a purpose
Lets say that we were created by "God"
He made us unique.
He made us special.
He gave us a purpose.

What stopped him from making an entirely different race on another planet?
Make them unique.
Make them special.
Give them a purpose.


Hell, maybe God wanted to see "I wonder what happens if I give them 4 legs instead of 2."


Here's another tangent about combining differening points of view....

Evolution v. Creationism

I believe it's in Genesis where it was said that Man was created in God's image, correct?

That is one of the main arguments that Creationists use to disprove Evolution.

How do we know that God didn't create man with evolution in mind, and over tens of thousands of years, perhaps even hundreds, we will evolve into His image? We will become "perfect"


Or, we could all be evolving into Aliens... Who knows...

 

Arglaar,

I'm going only from what the Bible says because I have come to an educated decision that it is 100% correct. (The proof is in the paper that I have written)-(I will email it to you if you want me to).

 

If you subscribe to the axiom of a Biblical creation, then evolution cannot be an option. Evolution depends on death to accomplish it's means. God's creation starts with two complete and perfect humans with no prior death up to this point. They are completed perfectly in their finished form.

Also, God repeatedly tells us in His Bible that we are below Him and cannot be Him or like Him. He is God, and we are His creation. He does tell us that we were created in His image - the image being a creation with a living spirit and a free choice to follow Him, something different than the rest of His creation. That perfection was ruined when mankind rebelled and was disobedient, thus God's judgement was pronounced upon mankind and all of creation. The judgement was spiritual death and the entrance of physical death.

(This is based on a Biblical axiom, to which I personally subscribe.)